The Pirate Bay Caught Running Cryptocurrency Mining Script

In 2015, it was reported that uTorrent was secretly installing Epic Scale Bitcoin mining software on users’ computer to get generate revenue. Now, something similar has happened with The Pirate Bay (TPB), one of the most visited platforms for downloading pirated content. As Alexa shows TPB is among 87 most visited sites in the world while it holds the rank of 55 in the United States.

However, recently; the Pirate Bay’s domain thepiratebay.org has been found using a cryptocurrency mining code to hijack CPUs of its visitors to generate Monero digital coins.

This was discovered by none other than TPB’s visitors themselves who noticed that upon visiting the site, their CPU usage dramatically increased. On further analysis, it was discovered that the site carries a cryptocurrency miner who uses their CPU to generate digital currency.

Script identified by users

One of the users “Intertubes_Unclogger” who discovered the script wrote in a Reddit post that while visiting TPB “I was looking at a torrent page and suddenly all my CPU threads went 100% 80-85%, something which usually only occurs when I’m encoding stuff. Happens on some pages, and it only stops when I navigate back to the home page or close the tab.”

“The code in question is tucked away in the site’s footer and uses a miner provided by Coinhive. This service offers site owners the option to convert the CPU power of users into Monero coins,” reports TorrentFreak.

It’s understandable that online businesses, especially websites providing free stuff have to make money to keep themselves up and running but it’s quite upsetting that on TPB it was done in secret and without the knowledge of its visitors.

However, TorrentFreak has received an official explanation from TPB according to which “the miner is being tested for a short period (~24 hours) as a new way to generate revenue.” It further stated that if the experiment goes successfully the site may remove ads and use the miner on a permanent basis.

The Pirate Bay users have now two things to sort out; one is downloading torrents from the site without giving away their IP address and second making sure the site’s cryptocurrency mining script won’t use their PC’s processor cycles.

Waqas

Waqas Amir is a Milan-based cybersecurity journalist with a passion for covering latest happenings in cyber security and tech world. In addition to being the founder of this website, Waqas is also into gaming, reading and investigative journalism.

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